Google Hit With Huge Number of Copyright Claims

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Google yesterday (May 24) issued its latest "transparency report"
showing how often it receives requests from copyright holders to
remove links to infringing material. And the numbers are huge.
Updated this morning, they show that in the last month 1,314
copyright owners and 1,099 organizations sent 1,255,402 requests
to take down search results pointing to copyright violating
sites. [ Jailbreaking
Smartphones Could Become Illegal ]

Google says that most of the requests are legit, acting on 97
percent of them. But Google deemed the remainder to be "clearly
invalid copyright removal requests, "it said in the report, such
as movie studios asking to take down links to articles in the
Internet Movie Database, or IMDB (which also covers TV programs),
and links to "the official trailer posted on a major authorized
online media service." It also received two requests from the
same studio to remove the link to the same newspaper movie
review.

In another case, a U.S. company requested removal of search
results that link to an employee's blog posts about unjust and
unfair treatment.

In a blog post yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation
advocacy group wrote, "Each of those are (sic) instances of
legitimate speech that would have otherwise been shut down.
Google deserves to be commended for that behavior."